Switzerland

This past week was Parent’s Week, and as such, we were given the “day off” on Thursday, giving us a four day (instead of the usual 3-day) weekend.

I was originally planning on trying to get to Fontgombault, but after talking with Dr. and Mrs. Newton about getting there and checking out a lot of different routes, they advised me against it, since it was at least a 25 hour train ride one way just to get close to Fontgombault. Ars turned out to be almost as far, so I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, especially as Krista was staying back with her parents so I couldn’t just let her figure out my life/weekend for me.

There was a talent show Tuesday night, and afterwards, I talked to one of the girls in my philosophy class, Arianna, for a couple minutes. I went with Arianna to the Broadway Mary Poppin’s in Vienna the weekend before, and already knew that I was pretty comfortable traveling with her, so when she suggested we go to Switzerland for the weekend, I was up for it.

I can’t remember what was going on Wednesday, but after classes, I felt very off and tired and generally like a big baby. I really didn’t want to do anything or go anywhere.

However, Arianna had already reserved a hotel for the first night and printed up train times that morning, so I knew it was happening and resigned myself to the fact.

She had classes for the rest of the day, and then Ministry to Mom’s right before we had to leave, so right before she ran off, she informed me that I needed to make reservations for the overnight train to Zurich and back, and figure out where stay the second night.

At the time, I was not pleased and was pretty annoyed - previously, I’d just been following people around to all my destinations and letting them figure everything out, so the fact that I actually had to take initiative, to MAKE DECISSIONS, was downright inconvenient. However, with Arianna busy running around like a headless chicken before we left, I was forced to step up to the plate, and as they say, the great aren’t always great, they’re only great when they have to be! But really, it was good for me – I now have a decent feel for train stations/times/etc, making reservations and booking sleeping places.

Anyways, we finally left Gaming around 6ish, and I was still in a big baby mood. I think the fact that it’s now pitch black outside by five freaking thirty effects my excitement. It’s a good thing that Arianna is awesome and a good big baby babysitter, because I was pretty awful (in the new sense of the term, Mary Ann ;))

We got to our overnight train around 11ish, and found to our dismay that there were two other people sleeping in the same couchette as we were. Awkward. However, one of Arianna’s friends was in couchette right next to ours, and since he was the only one and had three extra couchettes, he invited us to sleep in there. We ended up doing that, since we didn’t feel comfortable in the other room, and so we spent the night on the suspended couchettes, praying that we didn’t roll off to our death in the middle of the night, what with the train moving and all that.

We were awakened the next morning by one of the train people (I can’t even remember the proper name for them right now – how sad is that?) and he started asking Arianna something in really poor English. I couldn’t understand anything, what with his accent and being awoken so suddenly, but Arianna apparently understood him. I was quite impressed, until I found out right after that she understood nothing of what he said and just basically repeated things back to him and smiled. 

That’s something I learned about Arianna this trip – she’s perfectly willing to go up to strangers and bluntly ask “do you speak English?”, listen to their directions, and then come back with little to no new information. She’s just really good at looking like she understands people when she definitely doesn’t, and doesn’t bother to try and ask them to clarify. Oh well, it all worked out in the end – we didn’t miss one wrong important connection the entire trip.

Anyways, as a result of the miscommunication, we didn’t get the promised on board breakfast, which was fine – I made up for by getting some really yummy doughnut ball things in the train station later.

So there we were, in Zurich, waiting for our next train to take us to Murren, where we realized two things: 1) neither of our credit cards were working at the ATM, and 2) EVERYTHING is ridiculously expensive in Switzerland. As an example: one Swiss franc is worth slightly more than one US dollar. A McDonald’s cheeseburger is one Euro in Austria (about $1.50), while a simple McDonalds hamburger in Switzerland is 3 francs (a little over $3). Man, am I excited to get back to the US and enjoy a “cheap” frappe ($2.47).

Despite these little inconveniences, we made our way safely to Murren. I think one of the Bond films were filmed there, because they had little Bond poster things scattered throughout the town, and when we took the cable cars up the mountain, they would start by playing the beginning of a Bond theme song.

It’s off season in Murren, so there were only two places open in the entire town for us to spend the night in, and the town itself was pretty quiet. A lot of the shops had odd hours – we couldn’t get into the grocery store for lunch and dinner the first day because it closed at noon on weekdays in the off season.

Water fresh from the mountains! Yumyum!

The Catholic church in the town, with cool tile/shingle things on it's side.

Thus we had to spend a decent amount of money on two sad sandwiches and two small plates of minuscule (but delicious!) chicken nuggets.

Hotel Jungfrau!

 We basically just chilled out the entire last part of Friday in Murren. We walked around a bit, and spent a lot of time in the hotel lobby either studying, sleeping or just thinking nothing. It was delightful!

The best lobby ever.

The next morning, after sleeping in, we got a pretty posh breakfast in the hotel. “Posh” here means a breakfast that consisted of more than just bread and yogurt. We actually got fruit, a couple pastries, and cereal! After breakfast, we packed up and got ready for something Arianna had been freaking out about since we left: paragliding.

Arianna was the one who planned everything out, so around 11:30, we met up with the two guys that we going to take us on the flight, hiked a bit up the mountain, and got ready for take off.

They gave us a wind-resistant jacket, a helmet, and then strapped this thing to us that I thought looked like a portable toilet. It had a little seat on the back of it, so you could really enjoy the flight, but it looked really absurd by itself. Then each of the guys strapped themselves to the back of our portable toilets, and gave us some instructions. Arianna took of first, and a couple seconds after her, the guide and I took some running steps and off we flew!

Right before takeoff

It’s pretty hard to describe the flight itself, so you’ll just have to wait till I get home and show you a couple of the videos.

It was super fun, but the entire time, I felt rather like a giant baby that was floating thousands of miles above the earth, strapped to a portable toilet. The feeling put a little bit of a damper on my excitement – I wish I could’ve flown by myself, but you have to get a license to do that.

After that super fun and super expensive flight, we took the cable car back up the mountain and chilled out for a couple hours before we had to leave for Luzern. We took the last half hour before we left to take lots of pretty pictures.

We couldn't resist. 

My oh-so-elegant cartwheel. At least now I know how ridiculous I look doing it. 

The train ride to Luzern was absolutely beautiful and so relaxing – imagine praying a Rosary in a quiet train that’s chugging up the Swiss Alps as the sun sets, and you've got an idea of how sweet it was. As Arianna kept saying the entire trip, it was “pure poetry”.

Going through Interlaken, on our way to Luzern.

We stopped in Luzern for a couple hours before we headed to Zurich for the night, because I had heard that Luzern was the prettiest city in Switzerland (which is saying a lot, for Switzerland). However, though it was only about 5:30, it was already pitch black out, so we’re just taking it on faith that Luzern is the prettiest city. It was definitely very beautiful at night, and very peaceful. We didn’t wander too far from the station – we made a little loop around a small river that had a lot of cool bridges over it.

From what I could see in the dark (which wasn’t very much), the water was very clear and very clean. The entire city looked pretty clean, and smelled like slightly of perfume and cologne (and I’m not one that usually notices particular smells)

Designer toilet paper. 

Nasty roasted chestnuts that tasted like brain.

We spent the last hour chilling on a few steps that led into the river, right in front of Jesuit (I think?) church. It was really fun, and eventually some ducks and swans meandered over to us. Arianna LOVES feeding birds, so of course she started feeding them, and one swan (who we named Bub) got really cocky and tried snapping some out of her hand. There was one white duck, who Arianna named Gertrude, and we liked her, so we gave her a lot of the bread. The other ducks tried scaring her off to get her bread, but she held her ground pretty well.

Bub

A lot of the buildings we saw had cool paintings on the side.

After that, we took a short train to a town just outside of Zurich, where I had reserved a room in a local house. Some other students recommended it, so while I was a little uneasy at first since it wasn’t an official hotel/hostel, it had good reviews and I was able to get a discount, so we went with it.

It took us FOREVER to find the house in the dark though – it was only a fifteen minute walk from the station, but it took us about an hour and a half. When we finally found it, we were pretty tired, so when a younger man came around the corner of the house and threw a giant bouncy ball (covered with a sheet painted to look like an eyeball) at us, we weren’t shocked at all. 

The young people who lived at the house were having a Halloween party, which isn’t normal for Europeans, but they told us they wanted to try it once. I think they wanted us to stay with them and talk about Halloween, but neither Arianna or I have had very much experience with the typical American “celebration” of Halloween, so we opted to go to bed.

The living room in the house we stayed, overlooking Lake Zurich.

Weird accordion style bench, made out of cardboard.

Pittsburgh was on the Swiss map!

We spent another lovely morning sleeping in, and after breakfast, we wandered around the little town. It had a nice little shopping street that was fun to walk around, and had a decent amount of clothing stores (all of which seemed to have the same old boring, drab, expensive and slightly strange European clothing). However, we had the most fun in the Coop – a grocery store chain that you can find all over Switzerland. We also wandered in another grocery store – we probably spent more time in grocery stores than in any other kind of store. It was really fun to see their little Christmas sections, and to look at all the yummy expensive food.

In the afternoon, we left the house along with a man from Serbia, who was staying that night at the house and wanted to know how to reach the train station. He worked for BMW at some assistant resources manager or something…I can’t really remember. He was nice enough but not very interesting.

We had about seven hours in Zurich – we originally planned to wander all over the city, but we were tired of lugging our big backpacks everywhere, so we spent most of the time chilling at a little park, a Starbucks and a Subway.

The little park was right next to a river, and man, that river stunk, so we didn’t get too close. I’m pretty sure I saw a guy finishing up number one right as we walked over, and there was a group of high school age kids that was smoking weed or something (I’m not sure what it was – it just smelled like skunk). Still, smells and strange people aside, it was a decent view, so we just sat there for a couple hours till it got dark. Then we went to a small Italian pasta shop, where we got some chow that was, again, expensive, but more reasonable than most other places.

After we finished there, we tried going over to McDonalds for WiFi and to study philosophy, but it was packed and smelled of major B.O., so we waltzed on over to a nearby Starbucks instead.

Man, I loved that Starbucks. It had two floors, and the top floor was full of nice comfy chairs, some tables for studying, and looked out on to the street. We spent the next couple hours there, finishing philosophy, looking at pictures of the other persons family, and again, just relaxing. Because we both needed to use the bathroom, and it cost two francs unless you bought something (in which case, you got a code for the bathroom), we bought the most expensive chocolate milk I’ve ever had. It was a large, about $10, and absolutely delicious. We also needed to use up the coins we had, since you can’t change coins into a different currency, so it worked out well.

Super expensive but delicious hot chocolate.

Arianna borrowed my phone for a little bit...

Starbucks closed about an hour before our train left, so we spent that time in a Subway (where the foot longs were twelve francs – about $14) just playing two player Euchre and Baseball. Then we peaced out of there, got to our train for Zurich, discovered we had the couchette all to ourselves, and enjoyed our overnight trip back to Gaming, arriving just in time for 10:00 Mass the next morning.

So, that’s Swizterland in a nutshell! Sorry if the account isn’t very interesting – I think I’ve been losing my knack to blow small tales out of proportion since I’ve been in Gaming.

Ah well. Until the muse strikes me.